He went out, locking the door behind him. The letter on the top he still held a little apart from the others, dropping it into the box by itself, holding it back to the last, as if hoping somehow to defeat its end. When it fell with a little swish upon the others, he turned away hurriedly. He was thinking of Ellen’s face—Tomlinson’s wife—the morning of the wreck.
“He done it, Johnny,” she had said piteously, wiping the wetness from her gray cheek. “And they ’ll turn him off, but it’s hard on an old man—and there’s not a cent laid by—not since the bairns came. We’d a bit before that, but it went for the boy’s burying—” The boy was Eddie, killed on the road the year before, a brakeman—Tomlinson’s only son. John had known him well. They had been schoolmates. “It’s hard on the bairns,” she had said.... They had come to live with Tomlinson—a boy and a girl.
He was walking slowly now, not thinking, hardly conscious of himself, hut feeling the misery in the old woman’s voice. At the corner he paused a little, staring at the opposite wall. What had he forgotten to do.... The desks were locked and the door.... His fingers felt the key in his pocket.... And the copy was ready for Whitcomb in the morning.... And the windows? Yes, they were closed.... But he must go hack. He would remember when he got there what it was.... With a little sigh he had turned back. He walked more quickly now.... He would measure the windows for the awnings. Perhaps that was what he was trying to remember. He sprang up the stairs quickly and was on the upper floor almost before there was time for thought. His coming had been swift, and perhaps too silent for a man in the upper loft who looked up with startled glance at the sound of a foot on the stair. He moved quickly from the place he had been standing in and met the boy half way in the big room, his glance full of nonchalance.
John stared at him a little. Then his brow raised itself.
The man returned the look, smiling. “Jolly old place!” he said, moving his hand toward the loft, “lots of room.”
The boy looked at him slowly. “No one comes up here,” he said.
“Except the old man. I know,” said the other pleasantly, “but I wanted some files for the morning—early. Thought I ’d save time getting them now—Save bothering the old man, too.”
“You did n’t find them, did you?” He was looking into the man’s eyes.
They flickered a little. “Well, I have n’t had time.” He laughed, easily. “I only want a couple of dozen.” He moved away a few steps.
“You won’t find them here,” said John.